If you'd like to turn with me
in your Bibles to 1 Samuel chapter 30, 1 Samuel chapter 30. And we'll read the first eight
verses. And it came to pass when David
and his men were come to Ziklag on the third day, and the Amalekites
had invaded the south and Ziklag, and smitten Ziklag, and burned
it with fire, and had taken the women captives that were therein. They slew not any, either great
or small, but carried them away and went on their way. So David
and his men came to the city, And behold, it was burned with
fire, and their wives and their sons and their daughters were
taken captives. Then David and the people that
were with him lifted up their voice and wept until they had
no more power to weep. And David's two wives were taken
captives, Ahinoam the Jezreelite, and Abigail the wife of Nabal
the Carmelite, and David was greatly distressed, for the people
spake of stoning him, because the soul of all the people was
grieved, every man for his sons and for his daughters. But David
encouraged himself in his God. And David said to Abiathar the
priest, Ahimelech's son, I pray thee, bring me hither the ephod. And Abiathar brought thither
the ephod to David, And David inquired at the Lord, saying,
Shall I pursue after this troop? Shall I overtake them? And the
Lord answered him, Pursue, for thou shalt surely overtake them,
and without fail recover all. David did just that, and if you'll
turn over with me to verse 18, Well, we'll read verse 17. And
David smote them from twilight even to evening of the next day.
And there escaped not a man of them, say 400 young men which
rode upon camels and fled. And David recovered all that
the Amalekites had carried away. And David rescued his two wives. And there was nothing lacking
in them, neither small nor great. neither sons nor daughters, neither
spoiled or anything that had been taken to them, David recovered
all. Again, we have a beautiful picture
of David representing our Lord in recovering his people. I've titled this message, David
Recovered All. This word recovered means to
return or to bring back. And that is exactly what the
Lord Jesus Christ did. He, as the son of David, as the
good shepherd of his sheep, returned unto his father, his wives, and
his children. Church of the Lord Jesus Christ
is often referred to in the Bible as the Bride of Christ. And here
we have a Jezreelite, not long after David's reign. You know
the nation divided between the North and the South, Israel and
Judah. And Jezreel would have been in
Judah, the southern nation, and Carmel was in the northern section. And so these two wives of David
represent the entire tribe of Israel. And we read in Romans
chapter 10 that all Israel shall be saved. When the Lord Jesus
Christ recovered his wives, he recovered every one of them.
There was no hurt in them. He brought them back home safely. Not only is the church referred
to as the bride of Christ, but they're referred to as the children
of God. To as many as received Him, to
them gave He the power to become the sons of God. And the world
might speak of God being everyone's father. That's not how the Bible
speaks. God is the creator of all men,
but he only has a father relationship with his children, those who
have been recovered by the work of the Lord Jesus Christ, those
who have been brought back safely by his work of redemption on
Calvary's cross. When Adam disobeyed God in the
garden. Not only was he representative
of you and me as our federal head, but he was also our seminal
head. We were actually, very literally,
in the loins of Adam. Every one of us, our descendants,
of our father Adam. And so when Adam sinned, God
reckoned that sin guilty not only of Adam, but of all of his
prodigy. And so we were there. We were the ones who were rebellious
against God. And in the fall, We didn't suffer
a broken leg, we didn't suffer even a mortal wound, we suffered
death. And the day in which you eat
of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, you shall surely
die. We died spiritually, separated
from God. No spiritual life, no understanding
of God, no fellowship with God. We spiritually died. Now the good news of having union
with our father Adam as our seminal head is that though in Adam all
died, even so in Christ shall we be made alive. And so when
the Lord Jesus Christ went to Calvary's cross, we were in Him. We were in Him. And God reckoned
His sacrifice as our sacrifice. God reckoned his death as our
death. And so, the father, the scripture
says in Isaiah 53, saw the travail of his son's soul, and the father
was satisfied. So, here we are. We've been carried
off by our father Adam. This, by the way, is why it was
absolutely necessary that the Lord Jesus Christ be born of
a virgin, that she be conceived not of the seed of Adam, but
of the Holy Ghost, the Lord Jesus Christ, the only man that was
ever born into this world without sin. And he lived his life perfectly
with no sin. In thought, in heart, in deed,
in speech, he was without sin. And then when he went to the
cross, God made him who knew no sin to be made sin for us
that we might be made the righteousness of God in him. Here's what's
being pictured here. The Lord Jesus Christ as the
son of David, recovering the fall of his children and the
fall of his wife and bringing them back into fellowship with
God. You and I come into this world
born dead, dead. I heard a story about a preacher
who was speaking of those who are without Christ
bearing the burden of their own sin and if they die with the
burden of their own sin on them, they'll be eternally separated
from God. And an unbeliever came up to
the preacher afterwards and he said, do you speak of unbelievers
carrying a great burden? He said, I'm not a believer and
I carry, I feel no burden. He said, how heavy is the burden
of sin? He said, is it 20 pounds? Is it 50 pounds? Is it 100 pounds?
I'd like to know. The preacher paused for a moment
and he thought and said, He said, if you took a 400 pound weight
and laid it on a corpse, would that corpse feel the weight of
that? And the man said, obviously not,
he's dead. And so it is with you. Until
God gives you life, you'll not feel the burden of your sin. We require a new birth. in order to feel the weight of
our sin, don't we? And then the Lord Jesus Christ
says to us, all ye that labor are heavy burdened. A lot of
people laboring, trying to salve their conscience for the guilt
that they feel. But only those who are heavy
burdened, only those who have the weight of sin beyond their
ability to carry, only those who who are laden down with their
sin will come. Come unto me, all ye that labor
in a heavy burden. I'll give you rest. Take my yoke
upon you. My burden is light. My burden
is light. Learn of me. Learn of me. Here's where we are. We're lost. We're undone. We have the burden
of sin. We've been carried off into spiritual
death. And the Lord Jesus Christ, in
love for his bride, in love for his children, goes before his
father. Shall I pursue? Shall I overtake? Yes, pursue them. And you shall
recover all. And David recovered all. He brought them all home safely.
Reminds me of, of the story of Hosea and Gomer. Hosea's name translated means
salvation. And I didn't know this, but Gomer's
name translated means complete. Complete. And the scripture says,
in him, in the Lord Jesus Christ, dwelleth the fullness of the
Godhead bodily. And you, are complete in Him. That's what the Lord Jesus did.
He went to recover His bride, those who were carried off by
the Amalekites, and He brought them back, and He recovered all. He recovered every last one of
them. The Lord told Hosea, take unto
thee a wife of whoredom and children of whoredom. For the land hath
committed great whoredoms and has departed from the Lord."
That's our condition, left to ourselves, left to ourselves. We are guilty of being as Gomer,
an adulteress. And I love that story because
Whenever Gomer would come outside to see what was left, she found
gifts on her porch in the morning. And thinking that they were left
there by her lovers, it was only revealed later that it was Hosea
that left those gifts for her. Gomer wasted herself and ended
up as a spent woman on the slave block. And Hosea, in mercy, went
and bought her back to himself, raised her children. There we
are, once again, there we are. We're Gomers, guilty of spiritual
adultery, guilty of forsaking our God, guilty of trying to
find our hope and our comfort in our own works or in the world. And the Lord, as Chris reminded
us, leaves the ninety and nine, and he goes after that one sheep. He knows his sheep. He knows
them by name, and he brings every one of them home. He said, I'll
not lose a single one. I'll not lose a one. What a beautiful
story of our Lord's redeeming work. We might ask, well, who
are these Amalekites and what do they represent? Well, Amalek
was the grandson of Esau. The Amalekites were the perpetual
enemies of Israel and their name translated means dwellers of
the valley. Chris reminded us last night
of who Esau represents in Romans chapter nine. Esau not only represents the
unbelieving world that are outside of the love and grace of God,
the reprobate. Jacob I've loved, but Esau I've
hated. But Esau represents something else. He represents something
in every child of God. Because that verse goes on to
say The older Esau, the firstborn, shall serve the younger Jacob. And Jacob and Esau represent
the two natures of the believer. We've been given a new nature,
been made princes, that's what Jacob translated means. Esau translated means red, it
means earthy, it means of the earth. And we have both of those
natures that remain with us. But here's the promise. The older,
Esau, our old man, that sinful nature that we bear in our bodies. Paul said, O wretched man that
I am, who shall deliver me from this body of death? I bear about
a corpse on my back all the time. The older, that's Esau, shall
serve the younger. What is it that drives us to
Christ? What is it that drives us to
Christ? Is it not our sin? Is it not the old man that's
constantly rearing his ugly head in our lives and in our thoughts
and in our motives and in our attitudes? Is he not the one
that that reminds us of our need for Christ, the older does serve
the younger. Esau, the Amalekites were perpetual
enemies of Israel. Turn with me to Exodus chapter
17, and you remember the story when the children of Israel come
out of Egypt, a picture of the Lord Jesus Christ delivering
us in salvation. And now they're going to spend
40 years in the wilderness before Joshua brings them into the promised
land. And here we are with the prophet
that is like Moses, the Lord Jesus Christ, who we live in
a We live in a wilderness, we live in a dry and thirsty land,
we live in a world that has no interest in the things of God.
And we're in constant conflict with Amalek, with that old man. It was the Amalekites that kept
attacking the Israelites for those 40 years while they were
in the wilderness. And you remember this story in
Exodus chapter 17, when God told Moses, send Joshua and the men
of Israel in battle against the Amalekites. And Moses was up
on the hill. and he had Aaron on one side
and Ur on the other side, and Moses would lift up his hands,
and while his hands were lifted up, a picture of the believers
seeking God's grace in prayer while in battle with this old
man. Joshua would prevail, but when his hands got tired, and
how tired we get in this spiritual warfare that we're in, and his
hands began to fall, The Amalekites made the progress in the battle.
Is that not your experience? And Aaron and Hur had to lift
up the hands of Moses. And these Amalekites continued,
they continued to harass the Israelites. And here in Exodus
chapter 17 at verse 14, we read, and the Lord said to Moses, write
this for a memorial in a book and rehearse it in the ears of
Joshua, for I will utterly put out the remembrance of Amalek
from under heaven. And Moses built an altar and
called the name of it Jehovah Nisi. The Lord is my banner. The only hope I have in my battle
with this old man is Christ and his work and his person and his
power and his grace. Though we walk in the flesh,
we do not war after the flesh for the weapons of our warfare
are not carnal, but they are mighty through God to the pulling
down of strongholds and bringing in captivity. Every thought,
every thought to the obedience of Christ. There's the thought. the obedience of the Lord Jesus
Christ, the victory that he won in recovering his bride and recovering
his children. We bring every thought, not into
our obedience, we don't get victory in our obedience to Christ. We get victory in setting our
affections on things above where Christ is seated at the right
hand of God, and we get victory in his obedience. to the obedience
of Christ. His obedience for us is the only
power that we have against Amalek. And therein we find our grace
and our hope and all of our salvation. And therein our David recovers
all. He recovers all. So God told
Moses, he said, And look at verse 16, and he said, because the
Lord hath sworn that the Lord will have war with Amalek from
generation to generation. Amalek's not going to be destroyed
until the end. I will destroy him. Let me show
you that. Turn over to the book of Numbers,
chapter 24. You remember Balaam, that false prophet? And he's been hired to curse
Israel, but God restrains him. The wrath of man shall praise
him, and the remainder he shall restrain. The Lord's gonna use
this false prophet for his glory, and the Lord's gonna put words
in Balaam's mouth, and force Balaam to give blessings to God's
people rather than curses. And here Balaam speaks, in chapter
24 at verse 20. And when he looked on Amalek,
he took up this parable and said, Amalek was the first of the nations. There's Esau, the firstborn. Amalek was the first of the nations. We come into this world as descendants
of our father, Adam, with a fallen nature. We are in need of being
recovered. We're in need of our David coming
and pursuing the Amalekites and capturing us and bringing us
back in fellowship with our Heavenly Father. And that's exactly what
he did. Look what he says. And when he
looked on Amalek, he took of this parable and said, Amalek
was the first of the nations, but his latter end shall be that
he perish forever. There's our hope, brethren. There's
our hope. We look through a glass dimly
now. We look to Christ through the eyes of faith one day. When this corruptible is made
incorruptible and this mortal is made immortal and we see him
as he is and we're made like him, no longer, no longer will
Amalek. Oh, one of the great joys of
the believer's heart is to be without sin, to be without sin,
to be rid of Amalek once and for all. And that's what the
Lord's promising to do. And that's exactly what David
did. He recovered his wife and his children from the Amalekites. What a glorious gospel picture,
what a hope. Amalek also, their name translated
means dwellers in the valley. And the Bible tells us that we
walk right now through the valley of the shadow of death. I know
that's often translated as the moment of our death, when we're
on our dying bed, and certainly that's true. But being alive
in Christ, we can only find life in Christ. And everywhere else
we look, there's nothing but death. Whether we look to our
old man, whether we look to Amalek, whether we look to the world,
it's all dead. And here is our hope that though
we walk right now through the valley of the shadow of death,
we'll fear no evil for thou art with me. Thy rod and thy staff,
they do comfort me. That's what our Lord said. I'll
never leave you nor forsake you. I've come to recover my wife
and to recover my children and I've And I've brought them out
of the hands of Amalek. And one day, Amalek will be utterly
destroyed. He will be no more. For now,
for now, that old man's walking through the valley, isn't he? We're a lot like lot. when Lot
had an opportunity to choose between the high ground or the
fertile low ground. Oh, he said, I'll go down there. That's a much richer land. And we know where he ended up.
We know where he ended up in Sodom. But how much like that
we are. How much like we are of what
the Lord described in Ezekiel chapter 37, that valley of dry
bones, when the Lord says to the prophet, he says, son of
man, can these bones live? I mean, they were sun bleached
bones. It was a picture. Well, that
Bible, the scripture tells us in the Bible who those bones
were. This is, God said to the prophet,
this is what you're seeing is the whole house of Israel. It's
the whole house of Israel. They raised their fist in rebellion
against me. And they died. And they're not
just dead. They're bones laying in a field. They're not even connected to
one another. There's not enough DNA in the
marrow of those bones to get a sample out of them. They're bleached bones. Can these
bones live? And what did the prophets say?
Lord, thou knowest. Lord, if they're going to live,
you're going to have to make them live. Prophesy unto them, son
of man. And Ezekiel began to preach the
gospel to these bones that were in the valley, dwellers in the
valley. There we are. There's that old
man Amalek. He's in the valley all the time.
And as the prophet began to preach to them, the bones came together,
bone to bone, sinew to sinew, muscle to muscle, and they began
to make shape. And yet there was no life in
them. There was no life in them. And then the Lord says to the
prophet, prophesy unto the wind. The wind is the spirit of God.
The wind listeth with us whoever he wills. It was the mighty rushing wind
of God's spirit that came on the day of Pentecost. And the
interesting thing is in the Hebrew language of the Old Testament,
the word for wind and the word for spirit is the same word.
And in the New Testament Greek language, the word for wind and
the word for spirit is the same word. It's the word ruach, it's
the word pneuma. We use that word pneuma, don't
we, in our speech. Pneumatics is something operated
with air. And so here we have the Lord
saying to the prophet, prophesy unto the wind, because unless
the spirit of God comes, and blesses the Word of God, there'll
be no life in them. But that's exactly what I'm going
to do. I'm going to send my Spirit, and He's going to empower my
Word, and He's going to make it effectual to the hearts of
my people, and they're going to believe it, and they become
alive. So though we are dwellers in
the valley, God still comes down to that valley and brings out
his wife and his children that have been taken captive by Amalek. Oh, this is a gospel, a glorious
gospel story, isn't it? In contrast to the valley in
the Bible, the Spirit, the Word of God speaks of mountains. And
it's laborious for the flesh to climb a mountain. And the
flesh would resist climbing a mountain. But by the power of God's grace,
He takes us in the new man to mountaintops. We remember the
story of Mount Carmel when the prophet Elijah built that altar
and prayed to God and the fire of God fell and the God that
answered by fire, he will be God and the prophets of Balaam
were destroyed. There we have a picture of the
new man on the mountain, on the mountaintop, experiencing the
power of God. in bringing salvation to God's
people. We have that same picture on
the Mount of Transfiguration when the Lord Jesus took Peter,
James, and John up on the Mountain of Transfiguration and the veil
of his humanity was taken away for just a moment, and the radiance
of his deity shined forth like the noonday sun, so that Peter,
James, and John were forced to the ground. And the voice of
the father spoke from heaven and told these apostles, this
is my beloved son in whom I'm well pleased. Hear ye him. Oh,
what a mountaintop experience. And when Peter speaks of that
experience in his epistle, he says, we did not bring to you
cunningly devised fables. We handled the Word of God and
we saw His glory on the mountain. And I love that next verse, brethren,
because we look at that and we think, oh, I'd love to have a
mountaintop experience like that. And the next verse says, And
we have a more sure word of prophecy. For the word of God came not
by private interpretation, but holy men of God spake as they
were moved by the Holy Spirit. We have, God's saying to us,
we have something better in his word, empowered by his spirit,
than Peter, James, and John had when they actually experienced
on a mountaintop the presence and the appearance of deity. Oh, might God make it so. Might
he make it so. Might he deliver us from that
old man that would drag us into the valley. And might he take
us by his word and by his spirit up to the mountain and reveal
the glory of Christ to us. And the most important mountain
in all of the Bible is Mount Calvary, where the Lord Jesus
Christ is hung on a tree between heaven and earth, the mediator
between God and man, the only man that was able to touch God
without being destroyed and touch man without being defiled. And there we have our mediator. And by virtue of our union with
Christ, we have hope that will not be destroyed, will not be
destroyed. and the hope of our defilement
is given to us by the promise of God that Amalek will be taken
from the face of the earth. The Lord has prepared a table
for us in the presence of our enemy. Last night, we talked about the
enemies of Christ and the enemies of his people and how the Lord
got victory over all those enemies. Let me ask you a question. Who's
your biggest enemy? I know for me, all I have to
do is look in the mirror Not on my right side or on my left,
right there. Of course, I'm getting to the
age now, when I look in the mirror, I get a crick in my neck for
jerking back to see who the old man is standing behind me. But
you understand, we are our own worst enemy, aren't we? Paul said the commandments of
God are holy and just and good, the law of God. But, and he said, to will is
present with me. Oh, I would love to be able to
obey God perfectly. I'd love to be without sin. But
how to perform that which is good, I find not. I can't find it in myself. I
have to look outside of myself and find it in my Redeemer. who came and slaughtered Amalek
and brought his wives, both his wives, not only did they represent
the northern and southern kingdom, they represent the whole church
of God. The Old Testament bride and the New Testament bride,
Jew and Gentile, he recovered all. You see that
in our text three times. And David recovered all. Not one was left behind. When
Moses brought the children of Israel out of Egypt, the scripture
says that not a hoof was left behind. Every Israelite and all
their possessions and even more than their possessions, the Egyptians
gave them gifts for them to leave. Not a hoof was left behind. All
the success, the accomplishment of the Lord Jesus Christ and
what he did in pursuing his bride and recovering her from Amalek,
he recovered all. He leaves nothing behind and
he needs nothing He leaves, not only does He leave no individual
behind, He leaves nothing behind in terms of what needs to be
done for her to be recovered. And there's no hurt left to her.
She's restored to her God perfectly. When is it that the Lord Jesus
recovered his bride and his children from Amalek. Very briefly, four
things. In redemption, in redemption,
he recovered all. God was doing business with God
on the cross. The Lord Jesus was not making
himself an offering to us to be accepted or rejected. He made
himself an offering to his heavenly father. And the father, as I've
said already, saw the travail of his soul. The Lord Jesus Christ
bore all the shame and all the guilt and all the separation. Is that not what bothers us most
about our sin? We're not much bothered by our
sin, not as we ought to be. The Lord Jesus Christ bore the
full burden of sin. But when we are bothered by our
sin, what is it that bothers us? Is it not the shame? Is it not the sorrow? Is it not
the separation? Your sin has separated you from
your God. That's what the Lord Jesus experienced. He bore our sins as his own and
he experienced the shame of sin and the sorrow of sin. And he
cried from the cross, my God, my God, why hast thou forsaken
me? He experienced the separation from his father because of the
sin that he was bearing to put away. And in that moment, When he bowed
his head and he said, it is finished, he recovered all. All the sins
of all of his elect, he put them away by the sacrifice of himself. He finished the work that his
father sent him to do, and the scripture says that by one offering
he hath, past tense, perfected forever them that are sanctified,
them that are set apart, That's what he accomplished at the cross. Father, shall I go and redeem
them? Go, and thou shalt be successful. And David pursued Amalek, and
he recovered all. He didn't leave a single one
of them behind. And so in redemption 2,000 years
ago, the Lord Jesus, well, the scripture says that God's Word
will accomplish the purpose for which He sends it, it will not
return unto Him void. We take, in preaching the Gospel,
we take great comfort in that, don't we? We take great comfort
in believing that the Word of God will be effectual as God
purposes it, and as He blesses it by His Spirit, and it will
not return unto Him void. It will harden some hearts, it
will soften others' hearts. The Lord Jesus is the living
word, the word that was made flesh, the word that dwelt among
us, the word that we beheld as the only begotten of the Father,
full of grace and truth. And when he ascended back into
glory, he took with him the names of those for whom he lived and
died. My word will not return unto me void. He returned to
his father with his bride and with his children, and with all
the names of those that are in the Lamb's Book of Life, they
are in the heavenlies now in the person of their Redeemer,
the Lord Jesus Christ. Oh, what hope we have. What hope
we have. There's our David recovering
all. But not only did he recover all
in redemption, he recovers all in regeneration. Paul said, when
it pleased God, when it pleased God who separated me from my
mother's womb and called me by his grace to reveal Christ in
me. He's speaking of that moment
in time when he was on the road to Damascus and the Lord Jesus
spoke to him, knocked him off his high horse and shined a light
from heaven. Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou
me? Oh, we see in that question that
the Lord asked Saul the union that Christ has with his bride,
with his church. Who art thou, Lord? I am Jesus,
whom thou persecutest. You put a hand on my bride and
on my children, you're putting a hand on Christ. Oh Lord, what
would you have me to do? He revealed Himself in Saul of
Tarsus and made Him to be the Apostle Paul. And Paul said,
what God did for me is a pattern, is a pattern for all of God's
people. He knocks them off their high
horse. He reveals Christ in them, and He puts in their hearts a
knowledge of what they've done in their sin. They look upon
Him whom they have pierced, the Lord Jesus, whom their sins put
on Calvary's cross, and they mourn after Him as one that mourneth
after His only Son. And there they are. And they
cry out, Lord, what would You have me to do? And they're carried
from the captivity of sin to the captivity of Christ. I've
come in order to lead captivity captive and to make those who
are slaves to their sin and slaves to their unbelief, to make them
my bride, my children, my servants." Oh, what a blessing. He does
that in regeneration. You see, regeneration for each
one that Christ died for must be experienced. Except you be
born again, you cannot perceive of, you cannot see, you cannot
enter into the kingdom of God. The necessity of the new birth.
And when the Lord Jesus comes in power, that's exactly what
he does. He exposes Amalek. We didn't know we had an old
man until we got a new man. We didn't know that our nature
was the nature of the valley and the nature of flesh, and
that that which is of flesh is flesh, and that the flesh profiteth
nothing. We thought that we were profiting
something before God, that we were offering God something in
our dedication, in our prayers, and in our old Esau nature, that
firstborn man. And what happened in our new
birth? I'll tell you what happened.
You know this what happened. God killed you, didn't he? He
put to death. Paul said, I was alive once without
the law. Paul was never without the law.
He was trained under the law from the very time that he could
hear and speak. But then he said, but when the
commandment came, sin revived and I died. I died. when the Spirit of God took the
law of God and applied it to my heart. Prior to that, I could
say, oh, I was an Israelite, a child of Benjamin. He said, concerning the law,
I was blameless. Remember what Paul said about
his life before his conversion? Concerning the law, I was blameless. He was standing up and publicly
saying, no man can identify any violation of God's law that I've
committed openly. And he thought that was his righteousness.
And that which I thought was gain, now I know is my loss. Because when the law came by
the Spirit of God, it revealed the nature of his heart. That's where sin is. Sin's a
matter of the heart. People think, well, if I can
just escape The world of temptation, somehow, you know, I can avoid
sin. Lock yourself up in a closet.
You just took the biggest problem with you. Sin's a matter of the
heart. And that's what Paul said. He
said, when commandment came, sin revived. I saw myself for
who I was. I didn't know I was a sinner
before that. And I died. The Lord Jesus killed
Amalek the moment he revealed himself to me. I saw what I was
according to my nature and that there was no life in me. Not
only did the Lord Jesus recover all in redemption on Calvary's
cross and in regeneration when he brings new birth and exposes
our old man for who he is. But that old man keeps rearing
his ugly head, doesn't he? Yes, he does. He does for me.
Chris, what you said earlier, that's my experience. The more
I hope I'm growing in grace and in the knowledge of the Lord
Jesus Christ, and the evidence of that is that I see more need
for grace now than I've ever seen before. The light of the
gospel is brighter, and the darkness of my sin nature is more evil
than it's ever been before. I'm in need of Christ more than
I've ever needed him in all my life. And it just keeps growing. Why? Because not only in redemption
and in regeneration, but in sanctification, Amalek has to be killed. Paul said, I died daily. I died
daily. I'm always looking for hope and
for life and for satisfaction and for peace outside of Christ. I'm always looking somewhere
else. And the Lord has to show me the deadness of that. and
he has to slay Amalek and deliver me from him again, and again,
and again, and again, and bring me back to Christ. That's why
Peter said, you know, in religion we always thought, we look back
at an experience that we had and we try to nail it down and
think, well, that's my salvation. I cannot look back at any past
experience and find any hope of my salvation. All my experiences
are suspect. I don't know what the condition
of my heart was when those things... I can't look back. I've got to
be looking. Peter said, to whom? Coming. I must be coming to Christ right
now. Am I looking to Christ right
now? There's my hope. I can't look back. Faith can
only be experienced in the present. It
can't be experienced in the past. and it can't be experienced in
the future. It can only be experienced right now. By God's grace, keeps his sheep
in the fold. He keeps his dogs on a leash,
doesn't he? He only lets us go so far, and
then he comes, as David did, and delivers his wife and his
children from Amalek again and again and again and again. And they suffer no loss. They
grow in grace as a result of their sinful experiences. That firstborn serves the older,
serves the younger. And they continue to see their
need for Christ. because of the faithfulness of
David to recover all. And as we saw in Numbers chapter
24, there's going to come a day when Amalek will be removed from
the face of the earth. That'll be the day that we'll
shed this body of death once and for all. and will be given a new resurrected
body in Christ, and will be made like him. Oh, what a glorious,
glorious day that will be. David said, I will behold thy
face in righteousness, and then I shall be satisfied. I shall be satisfied when I awake
in thy likeness. Faith is satisfied with Christ
to be all of their righteousness before God. Faith is satisfied
only with the Lord Jesus Christ for all of our justification,
all the forgiveness of our sins. Brethren, we walk through this
valley of the shadow of death and we are so not satisfied with
ourselves, are we? We're just, we've got, Lord,
you're going to have to deliver me. You're going to have to come
get me again from Amalek. Come get me again. Lord, one
day, one day you're going to, in mercy, you're going to put
this old flesh back where it came from, the dust of the earth,
and you're going to give me a new body. Then, then, I shall be
satisfied. David, recovered all.